The incorporation of thaumatin by the industry not only offers a tool to help decelerate the obesity epidemic caused by increased childhood sugar intake decades ago, but also provides itself with a more economically viable solution. Firstly, as sugar taxations emerge, sugar reduction becomes a financial incentive. Secondly, the reduction of sugar and the addition of thaumatin to retain the same level of sweetness has the potential to save millions of dollars per day on the cost of sweetening beverages. Assuming that the average “standard” sucrose concentration in SSBs is 35.5 g per 12 fl oz. drink ~10%, and a $0.30/kg sugar price, Figure 6 shows the potential savings from using thaumatin to reduce sugar content by 20%, 30%, and 50%, while maintaining the same sweetness as the standard for a range of thaumatin purchase prices. The amount of thaumatin needed to obtain the same sweetness as a 10% solution in each sugar reduction scenario was calculated using the sensory regression analysis included in a published GRAS notice . Table 3 shows the daily and annual amount of thaumatin needed for each sugar reductions scenario, assuming that one billion 12 fl oz drinks are to be sweetened per day. Successful implementation of thaumatin in this avenue can liberate R&D resources to improve expression levels and increase production volumes,greenhouse vertical farming both of which have a substantial impact on COGS reduction, as we have demonstrated.Our preliminary engineering facility design indicates the feasibility of thaumatin manufacturing by various molecular farming platforms.
The most economic method is the field grown ethanol-inducible, transgenic N. tabacum, assuming a downstream facility without chromatography . It remains unclear whether heat incubation is sufficient to achieve the desired purity for a safe product without the inclusion of chromatography on a large-scale. In a previous plant-made food safety product techno-economic analysis, a chromatography unit was included for protein purification from N. benthamiana; however, heat precipitation of host cell proteins was not included as a purification step. We also demonstrate the importance of resin selection and thorough chromatography operation optimization by evaluating the cost benefit of maximizing resin binding capacity to target product. Of course, further work is needed to verify whether the use of column chromatography is needed. Transient production of thaumatin in the edible crop Spinacia oleracea was also economically competitive and captures the benefits of obviating the need for an intensive DSP. According to this analysis, the cost to produce a kg of fresh weight of spinach is $0.10, as opposed to a cheaper price for tobacco . This is attributed to the higher cost of the seeds of spinach, the longer turnaround time assumed for spinach, and the higher plant density assumed for tobacco. It is evident that field operation is very labor intensive, due to the low recipe cycle time of 2 days, which is different than the traditional time frame of growing those crops. The potential for high intra-batch variations in product yield and quality due to meteorological factors is one of the concerns of using field grown plant material for this application. These variations in turns cause inconsistency in key facility performance parameters that should be quantified using a probabilistic approach and communicated to stakeholders and will be addressed in a follow-up communication.
The cost of obtaining a more controlled supply of product is reflected in the indoor upstream facilities CAPEX and COGS. This should facilitate decision making when assessing the risk and reward of each scenario. The large-scale recombinant production of thaumatin can address the growing market need for natural, safe, non-caloric sweeteners. Like stevia, the advent of thaumatin as a sugar substitute is contingent on the feasibility of its large-scale manufacturing which was addressed in this work. However, there are also social, cultural, and behavioral factors impacting sugar consumption habits that were not considered. Consumer’s preference of such products will open the door for more plant-made biologics for food and beverage applications, which could drive the adoption of cost-effective solutions to rising challenges through environmentally friendly and sustainable processes. Substance use is a multiply determined outcome that is influenced by contextual, as well as dispositional, factors. A large literature suggests that family dynamics contribute to adolescent substance use, and that such processes may moderate the effects of dispositional variables . One family factor consistently related to substance use is parental monitoring , or, “parenting behaviors involving attention to and tracking of the child’s whereabouts, activities, and adaptations” . Monitoring is considered a protective factor against substance use, and studies confirm that increased parental monitoring predicts less use, even in high-risk and diverse samples. Despite the well-documented association between parental monitoring and adolescent substance use, the actual direction of the effect between these variables is controversial. Although it is typically assumed that parental monitoring reduces problem behaviors in adolescence, monitoring may also reflect the outcome of a reactive process whereby parents increase or decrease monitoring efforts in response to adolescent behaviors .
Indeed, parents sometimes decrease their monitoring efforts when their adolescents engage in delinquency . Moreover, parental monitoring may serve a protective role only for youth who have dispositional tendencies toward substance use. That is, monitoring might decrease risk for youth who have temperamental traits associated with substance use , but be less relevant for adolescents who do not have such characteristics. The current study will contribute to the existing literature by testing both additive and interactive effects of temperament and parental monitoring. Prospective correlations are reported in Table 3. Aggression assessed in fifth grade was associated with future substance intentions and expectancies, as well as reports of actual use. Effortful Control was negatively correlated with future substance use variables, but the effect sizes were roughly half that of the correlations involving Aggression. Depressive mood was related to intentions and actual use, but not expectancies. Child reports of parental monitoring were related to substance use variables more consistently than parental reports. Overall, there were consistent prospective zero-order correlations supporting an association between certain individual differences and early substance use. Regression analyses were used to control for fifth grade levels of the respective substance use variables when predicting the ninth grade variables . As seen in Table 3, although controlling for the baseline substance use variables reduced effect size estimates, all relevant predictors remained statistically significant.We should note that endorsements of the substance use variables in fifth grade were quite low , and floor effects may have attenuated the predictive power of the fifth grade assessments. However, these distributions might simply reflect the reality of low substance use at relatively young ages . The prospective associations were supplemented with concurrent analyses using temperamental variables, parental monitoring variables, and substance use variables measured in ninth grade . The correlations tended to increase in magnitude, but the pattern was generally consistent with the prospective correlations. Aggressive temperament and child reports of monitoring were the strongest correlates of substance use intentions, expectancies, and actual use. Effortful Control was also consistently linked with these outcomes.We found support for the idea that certain temperamental traits are related to substance use,vertical farming investment and some evidence that parental monitoring is associated with substance use. We also tested whether temperament interacted with parental monitoring to predict substance use variables. We focused on child reports of monitoring for these analyses because parental reports of monitoring were not generally associated with substance use outcomes .Prior to analysis, the three substance use variables were log transformed to address concerns about skewness . All predictors were grand mean centered, and interaction variables were computed as the product of the two centered variables. When the interaction term was significant in a regression model, a set of simple slopes analysis was performed for “high” and “low” levels of a given dimension of temperament. We first considered prospective relations, using temperament and monitoring assessed in 5th grade to predict substance use variables in 9th grade. Selected results are presented in Table 4. Complete results are available upon request. Two sets of temperament by monitoring interactions replicated across both substance use and intention variables – those involving effortful control and depressive mood.
Results suggested that parental monitoring had very little association with substance use intentions and substance use in 9th grade for adolescents with high levels of effortful control in 5th grade. However, parental monitoring was a significant predictor of these variables when adolescents were low in effortful control. Likewise, monitoring was primarily a protective factor when depressed mood was relatively high in 5th grade. These interactions are illustrated in Figures 1 and Figure 2. In short, there were indications that parental monitoring might be most relevant for youth with dispositional tendencies associated with substance use. We then evaluated concurrent relations using 9th grade data. Selected results are presented in Table 6. Significant results were restricted to the substance use intention variable, but the effortful control and depressive mood pattern was replicated. In general, the significant patterns were consistent with the prospective analyses and indicated that monitoring was a stronger predictor for youth with temperamental dispositions that placed them at risk for greater substance use . However, these interactions were restricted to only one substance use variable, and thus should be viewed with caution. We investigated the prospective influence of temperament and parental monitoring on substance use using data from a longitudinal study of Mexican-origin youth and their families. We focused on willingness to use substances , expectations for positive outcomes , and lifetime use of alcohol, cigarettes, and other drugs. The rates of substance use in this sample were similar to what has been reported for Hispanic adolescents in nationally representative surveys . Specifically, around 40% of participants had tried a substance at least once by 9th grade , and furthermore, considerably more participants had tried a substance by 9th grade compared to 5th grade. These rates are thus also similar to what has been reported for European American and African American adolescents, and higher than what has been reported for Asian American adolescents . As expected, low effortful control and high aggressive tendencies assessed in 5th grade were the most robust predictors of substance use variables in 9th grade. These findings fit with previous research indicating that temperamental traits related to impulsivity are associated with substance use . Moreover, these associations held while controlling for previous levels of the substance use variables in 5th grade . This finding is consistent with White and colleagues’ suggestion that aggression serves as a risk factor for future substance use irrespective of previous use. These longitudinal findings are particularly noteworthy because Mexican Americans are the largest and fastest growing ethnic minority group in the United States, yet this population has received relatively little attention in research on the temperamental correlates of substance use. Beyond finding evidence that temperament prospectively predicts substance use, we also examined the main and interactive effects of parenting monitoring. Consistent with previous research , child-reported parental monitoring in 5th grade was associated with 9th grade substance use variables, even after controlling for prior levels. In contrast, parent reports of monitoring had only concurrent associations with substance use variables. Although the greater predictive power of child reports could simply reflect shared method biases, we believe that a pure methodological explanation is unlikely to fully account for the findings. Instead, we suspect that youth perceptions of parental behaviors are especially salient developmental considerations when attempting to understand risk for substance use. Youth who believe their behavior is being monitored will likely behave differently than youth who do not believe there is surveillance of their behaviors. Indeed, beliefs about parental behaviors and values might be more consequential than actual parental behaviors and values for understanding adolescent substance use. This is consistent with Voisine and colleagues’ suggestion that parental injunctive norms are more effective in preventing substance use than parental monitoring per se. Nonetheless, further research is needed to better understand the relative importance of child vs. parent reported monitoring for substance use outcomes. Most notably, both effortful control and depressive mood interacted with monitoring in 5th grade to predict intentions and use in 9th grade. These interaction effects suggest that parental monitoring is a protective factor for youth with the temperamental tendencies associated with risk for substance use.